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4:00AM morning outside the New York Hilton: the city wakeup-crowd stirs pre-dawn Manhattan lights. From the 53rd St. lobby the regal doorman guides me to Kennedy International-bound taxi and deli coffee black…impeccable New York service in hand. The cab ride provides the necessary 30 minute Internet-access window to post aimClear Blog conference coverage waiting in WordPress.  Then it occurs to me: “Dude, I must be pretty screwed up to be blogging in a TAXI.”

Search marketing conference attendees seem to be the most plugged-in-public group of techno-comrades on earth. We rove in packs of iPhone and laptop-totting pied-pipers evangelizing link love, holistic patterns, authentic participation, conversion tracking, and good will. These SEMS, SEOs, PPCs, Mr., Mrs. & Ms are such beautiful people. I love the search marketing industry because ya’ll are SO plugged into the grid, running remote marketing machine empires from Blackberries.

We’re a curious and over-stimulated group, resulting in behavior that will have future anthropologists mumbling to themselves. It’s a great time to be alive and so many incredible ways to connect for business and pleasure. Here’s 13 Undeniable symptoms of total communications-grid immersion.  These are not listed in any particular order of severity.

It’s Day 3 at SES New York 2008 and today the folks from Pan Communications have found more than 80 stories that have been written about the Search Engine Strategies conference.

I’ve looked through the news articles and blog posts from Wednesday, March 19, 2008, to try to identify the top ten stories on Day 3 of the event. It’s getting much harder – particularly after returning from the WebmasterRadio.FM SearchBash, which was still going strong when I left.

1. Mahalo adds user reviews to search site
Elinor Mills of CNET News.com says, “Mahalo is adding user reviews to its human-powered search site in a new feature dubbed ‘My Mahalo.’ So, when you search for books, movies, music, places, and products, a box appears on the right with reviews and comments from people in your Mahalo social network, as well as an average rating for whatever is being reviewed. Underneath the results is a section for user-recommended links related to the search and user reviews from other Mahalo users, as well as a link to discuss the page with others.â€

2. Jason Calacanis gives product demo of My Mahalo at SES New York
John Mulligan of SEO-PR interviewed Jason Calacanis, the founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, who gave a product demo of My Mahalo, which was unveiled at SES New York today.

3. SES Keynote: Search Has Changed Everything…And So Can You by Gordon McLeod
Kent Lewis of Search Marketing Standard says, “Wednesday morning at SES kicked off with a keynote by Gordon McLeod from Wall Street Journal Digital Network entitled “Search Has Changed Everything…And So Can You.†McLeod initially outlined the size and shape of the current WSJ network of financial news sites, then took us back to the 1996 WSJ.com site, which had 50,000 subscribers and four firewalls.â€

4. Uncovering the Real Universal Search
Kevin Ryan of Search Engine Watch says, “Ever wonder just how fast universal search is being adopted? How about the number of searchers that include a universal result? Perhaps more importantly, what’s the real impact of search result multiplicity?
You asked, and we found out. This week’s SES New York saw many new things, but Tuesday’s Orion Panel on universal search finally shed some light on the biggest change in search since Idealab launched paid listings.

5. Google Transformation from Just Search to Destination
Om Malik of GigaOM says, “Almost a year ago, writing for GigaOM, Robert Young posted a piece that billed Google as a media company and eventually more a destination in the classic media sense. Some statistics released by comScore at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York support Young’s assertions.â€

6. Web Analytics Tips – SES New York Style
Mel Carson of the adCenter Analytics Blog says, “I’m at the Search Engine Strategies 2008 conference in New York, working the Microsoft booth, meeting customers, spreading the word about adCenterCommunity.com and going to as many of the sessions as I can. For any of your not familiar with the conference it has a global footprint and is totally dedicated to search engine marketing, both PPC (pay-per-click) and SEO (search engine optimisation).â€

7. SES New York: Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Andrew R H Girdwood says, “Rookie mistake! I didn’t get to the room early enough for the popular Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO) track and all the power sources for my laptop are already in use. No batteries left. No choice… I’ll have to try and take notes by hand.â€

8. Search Engine Strategies Expo

Mike Corso of Cool Site of the Day says, “Big day yesterday. I was interviewed at the Search Engine Strategies trade show in New York City (see clip below). Also, tune into WebmasterRadio.fm for an interview I did with them at SES as well.â€

9. SES NY: SEM Blitz On Small Business
David A. Utter of WebProNews says, “You have to spend money to make money, but sometimes the best way to market a business means spending common sense.â€

10. Link Building Basics Session at SES NY
Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal says, “Allan Dick of Vintage Tub and Bath is moderating the session on Link Building with Debra Mastaler, Dixon Jones and Degrelle.â€

It’s Day 2 at SES New York 2008 and the folks from Pan Communications have found nearly 70 stories that have been written about the Search Engine Strategies conference. If you want a comprehensive list, Matt McGowan, the Global Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media, will be posting one later this evening on the Search Engine Strategies Blog.

In the meantime, I’ve looked through the news articles and blog posts from Tuesday, March 18, 2008, to try to identify the top ten stories on Day 2 of the event. With five concurrent sessions, no one individual can see everything. So, even those of us who are at SES New York this week are relying on the news and blog coverage (as well as word-of-mouth) to keep up with all the latest developments from the event. (Trade shows and conferences are an off-line form of social media.)

1. Carr: Google Offers ‘Animal Sacrifices’ in Datacenters
Clint Boulton of eWeek’s Google Watch says, “Nicholas Carr discussed the past, present and future of computing during a keynote at the Search Engine Strategies 2008 show in New York this morning.†He adds, “Carr covered so much ground in the 60 minutes, touching on everything from the first water wheel used to generate electricity, to mainframes, to cloud computing and Google’s datacenters and the future of distributed applications and search engines strategies.â€

2. Nick Carr Keynote
You can listen to Nick Carr’s opening keynote at SES New York on WebmasterRadio.FM. Nick discusses how computer systems and software algorithms are at the center of business today, and the implications for privacy.

3. Nick Carr at SES NY 2008 on The Big Switch

Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner of Beyond Ink, interviews Nick Carr, the opening keynote speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York City and the author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the Word, from Edison to Google. Nick gives a recap on his New York keynote speech about Microsoft’s unsolicited bid for Yahoo, net neutrality, and the implications on human thinking.

4. YouTube: Damon Wayans Pay-to-Play, Paid Inclusion or Pay-for-Placement?
Kevin Heisler of Search Engine Watch says, “At SES NY, John Battelle outted Damon Wayans, Google and YouTube. Battelle said Wayans spilled the beans on his YouTube deal as a “platinum partner†for WayOutTV.com. Wayans shared he was guaranteed 6 million impressions by YouTube. Those 6 million impressions — guaranteed — sounds very much like the structure of a MySpace-style minimum revenue deal. Plus, Wayans shared his YouTube rev share number. Wow.â€

5. hakia licenses OntoSem technology to third parties
Paul Miller of ZDNet’s The Semantic Web says, “New York-based semantic search company hakia will today use the Search Engine Strategies Conference to announce that their Ontological Semantic technology, OntoSem, is available for licensing. Illinois-based RiverGlass, Inc. is the first licensee, and will work to enhance their existing real-time analytics solutions with OntoSem.â€

6. SES New York: Converting Visitors into Buyers
Jolina Pettice of the Online Marketing Blog says, The conversions track at SES New York continues to be packed with those wanting to increase the performance of their search marketing campaigns.â€

7. The Long Tail Not Always Good, If Quality Score is Your Thing
Andrew Goodman of Traffick says, “I had the pleasure of moderating the panel on Ads in a Quality Score World at SES New York today. Along with two advertiser-side speakers (Joel Lapp and Jon Kelly), Frederick Vallaeys of Google and David Miller of Yahoo weighed in.â€

8. Earning Money from Contextual Ads
Tamar Weinberg of Search Engine Roundtable says, “This session looks at the way publishers can generate revenue by carrying contextual ads offered by major networks. Learn about some programs out there and tips on getting more from the ads you carry.â€

9. SES New York: Live Search “Tips And Tricks”
By Doug Caverly of WebProNews says, “Although people sometimes forget this fact, there are search engines outside of Google. At SES New York, two Microsoft managers walked an audience through ways to do well with Live Search.â€

10. SES New York Day 2 … Start Your Engines!
Jeff Quipp of the aimClear Blog says, “Day 1 of Search Engine Strategies New York certainly lived up to expectations. The sessions were excellent, the city is spectacular, and I was fortunate enough to meet up with a large number of new and old friends. The day ended for most with a St. Paddy’s day pub crawl, primarily through Irish bars :).†He adds, “Day 2 is shaping up to be equally exciting. I’m personally live blogging some of the Local search sessions, which I’m really looking forward to.â€

It’s only Day 1 at SES New York 2008 and the folks from Pan Communications have already found more than 40 stories that have been written about the Search Engine Strategies conference. If you want a comprehensive list, Matt McGowan, the Global Vice President of Marketing for Incisive Media, will be posting one later this evening (or early tomorrow morning) on the Search Engine Strategies Blog – when he gets back from the Saint Patrick’s Day pub crawl.

In the meantime, I’ve looked through the news articles and blog posts from Monday, March 17, 2008, to try to identify the top ten stories on Day 1 of the event. While this list is no substitute for actually attending SES New York 2008, it will give you a quick summary of some of the highlights.

1. Yahoo! Cozies Up To Its Click-Fraud Critics
Andy Greenberg of Forbes.com says, “At Monday’s Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in New York, Yahoo! announced a partnership with click-fraud auditing firm Click Forensics to share pay-per-click advertising data and work together to identify fraudulent clicks–those designed to pump a Web publisher’s advertising revenue or drain a competing advertiser’s budget.â€

2. Search Spend Seems Healthy Despite Slowing Economy
Kevin Newcomb of Search Engine Watch says, “Despite an increasingly gloomy economic forecast, spending on search engine marketing continues to grow beyond expectations. Preliminary results of the 2007 State of the Market Survey were released today at Search Engine Strategies New York by SEMPO, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization.â€

3. Kicking Off SES New York 2008
Mike McDonald of WebProNews interviewed Matt McGowan about Search Engine Strategies New York 2008, which kicked off today with about 8,000 attendees. Matt explained what can be expected in the week ahead.

4. Orion Panel: Getting Vertical Search Right
Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable covered the Orion Panel: Getting Vertical Search Right. Barry says, “Jason Finger talks about his online food service. They link people with local restaurants and caterers. Steven Krein is from a human powered health search service. Bill Tancer gives the Hitwise line, love this guy. Josh Stylman from Reprise Media. Paul Forster from Indeed.com a Job Search site.†Barry adds, “This is a unique session.â€

5. Analytics: Data Into Action
Lisa Barone of the Bruce Clay Blog covered the Analytics: Data Into Action session. Lisa says, “Kevin Ryan gets things started and says next time he’ll get a bigger room. Hee, seriously. And it’s not that the room is even small, it’s just there are about a gazillion people trying to get in. The SES conference series is alive and well, people.â€

6. Neil Patel interviews Jason Calacanis, SES NY 2008

Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising interviewed Jason Calacanis, founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, who will be the afternoon keynote speaker on Wednesday, March 19, 2008. The two discuss issues such as spam, the search engine optimization (seo) philosophy as a whole and its problematic frictions between publishers and users in the battles for visibility and search relevance.

7. Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics at SES NY 2008

I interviewed Avinash Kaushik, author, blogger, and Analytics Evangelist at Google about the standing-room-only-crowd at the Web Analytics: Measuring Succession session, where he spoke. He also talked about trends in web analytics over the next 24 to 36 months, his highly-rated blog, Occam’s Razor, and his recently published book, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.

8. Session: Organic Listings Forum
Lee Odden of the Online Marketing Blog covered the Organic Listings Forum. Lee says, “Organic Listings Forum with Mike Grehan moderating and Jill Whalen, Dave Naylor and Greg Boser on the panel. Here we have an all star SEO cast available to answer questions about organic SEO.â€

9. SES New York: Video Made the SMB Star (Kelsey Group Track)
Li Evans of Search Marketing Gurus covered the Video Made the SMB Star session. Li says that Mike Boland of the Kelsey Group, who moderated the session, said, “Users are coming to expect Video as part of their search results.â€

10. Ad Exchanges - What You Need to Know
Mona Elesseily of Traffick wrote a preview of the Ad Exchanges are Everything session, which will be held at SES New York 2008 on March 19 2008 (Day 3). Mona says, “To learn more about the changes in ad exchanges, I interviewed both Ramsey McGrory, VP of Exchange Development, Right Media and Jay Sears, SVP of Strategic products and business development, ContextWeb.â€

Mike Grehan, the Global KDM Officer at Acronym Media and Co-chair of SES London 2008, was one of the hardest working people at the event.

He moderated 11 sessions: the Organic Listings Forum; Search Around the World - Part Two: Europe and the Americas; Landing Page Testing & Tuning; Converting Visitors into Buyers; European Search Marketing Case Studies; Linking Strategies; Meet the Crawlers; Dynamic Websites: Beyond the Basics; Search Advertising Clinic; My SEM Toolbox; and Web Analytics & Measuring Success Overview.

Oh, and he also spoke on the Orion Panel about Universal, Blended and Vertical Search, as well as at the Keynote Roundtable on The Changing Search World.

Mike is also an expert SEM writer for the ClickZ Network. No wonder his latest column is entitled, How to Avoid a Crash Landing.

I caught up with Mike while he was taking a short break to catch his breath to interview him about the show and the industry for the new Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences & Expos channel on YouTube.

Mike Grehan, Acronym, on SES London 2008

Acronym Media recently announced the appointment of Mike Grehan as Global KDM Officer, as in “keyword-driven marketing.” It’s a newly-created senior executive position with worldwide management responsibilities. Mike will share his time between New York City and the U.K., guiding development of Acronym’s new operations around the globe, with particular focus on Europe and Asia Pacific regions.

Mike was also appointed to Acronym’s five-member executive board and given broad responsibilities to drive the Agency’s global growth and strategy development for key clients, including SAP, Nokia, BMW, HP, and Four Seasons Hotels.

Mike has executive experience with the industry’s leading SEM firms and is recognized as a foremost SEM expert. He is the author of multiple books and white papers on the topic, and his best-selling second edition of Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide received more plaudits from the industry’s leading players than any other book on the subject.

In 2004, Mike was voted one of the U.K.’s Top 100 Influential People in Internet Marketing for the previous decade in a poll of online marketer E-consultancy’s 22,000 U.K. members. He is also a sought-after conference speaker, and his own personal newsletter has attracted over 17,000 subscribers.

He will be moderating three sessions at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York: The Organic Listings Forum; The Orion Panel on Universal Search; and Meet the Crawlers. In addition, Acronym Media will be an exhibitor at SES New York 2008 at Booth #134, located in the Rhinelander Gallery.

While Google CEO Eric Schmidt claims the possible merger of Yahoo and Microsoft could break the Internet, the launch of yet another free service - the new Ad Manager they are now beta testing - seems to be more of a threat.

“It’s an unstable situation. But the theoretical issue is the concentration of Microsoft’s resources and its history, combined with the very large share that it would have in certain applications—like instant messaging and email—that could be used essentially to break the internet and diminish choice,” Schmidt told Portfolio.com.

Obviously Google does not think they are hurting the entrepreneurial spirit of the web.

Combined Yahoo and Microsoft hold less search share than Google. Giving away services that companies have their entire online business income based on seems more of a threat.

You have to figure the ad server firms will now be complaining to the analytics companies about the impact of Google on their livelihood.

So I guess the Ides of March will no longer be remembered just as the day Julius Caesar was killed, but also the day the ad server industry was also knifed in the back.

“”The quick appearance of this new service may be an indication of how well matched the two companies’ offerings are to begin with. Ad Manager isn’t the sort of product that occurred to Google after it announced its intention to acquire the company. This has probably been on the drawing board since before the deal was publicly discussed. Now that the acquisition is complete, Google was prepared to roll it out very quickly — in less than 72 hours after the deal closed,” Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT Research told NewsFactor.com.

The impact on the ad server industry should be another of the hot topics being discussed during next week’s SES conference in New York.

PS: Even the NY Times sees something in this new launch, they wrote an article called Google’s Trojan Horse: Let The Free Ad Serving Begin!

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is all over Microsoft — but not as in “the Fat Lady sings.”

He foresees Microsoft breaking the Internet: not crushing competitors — literally obliterating the Internet. Schmidt’s “not aware” of a Google proposal to buy the New York Times but “doesn’t rule anything out.”

Russ Mitchell’s Portfolio interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a must-read.

Read it now — or this weekend — before you arrive in NYC for SES — or follow the conference via live blogging and video interviews.

Schmidt says that the “concentration of Microsoft’s resources and its history, combined with the very large share that it would have in certain applications—like instant messaging and email—that could be used essentially to break the internet and diminish choice.”

The entire April issue will be online Monday — the first day of Search Engine Strategies New York — with Portfolio magazine on newsstands in New York on Wednesday, April 19th — day 3 of SES New York.

Portfolio blogger Kevin Maney says “Google has won” — except Eric Schmidt doesn’t know it.

Priceline CMO Brett Kellner joined us this week at Google’s New York headquarters (via conference call) to chat about travel trends in vertical search, the robust health of paid search (PPC) campaigns, and integrating online and offline advertising campaigns.

Last year I predicted 2008 would the year CMOs “get search.”

Brett, who leads one of the world’s most successful online pureplays, “got search” years ago. His leadership in vertical search is one of the reasons why so many of his peers have started to see the value of search-driven branding and direct marketing campaigns.

While many CMOs are only starting to ask their VP or director of marketing how search works, Priceline has already started testing Google audio ads and Google TV ads. The early results? All good.

Brett didn’t try to sell us anything at Google. He didn’t even mention the upcoming launch of Priceline’s new vertical search innovation: Inside Track. So when HotelMarketing.com broke the news about Priceline’s Inside Track “search agent” we thought Brett and William Shatner deserve a plug.

Priceline has launched Inside Track, a new tool that allows users to create a personalized airline ticket “scout.” You can see the top 50 biggest savings routes for Priceline’s Name Your Own Price.

The tool also provides analysis of best days to travel as well as notifications of increases in decreases in airline prices in a given city. This will allow users to act on price changes as they occur instead of being tied to submitted travel terms.

SEW Blogger Nathania Johnson visited Inside Track and found it not unlike a financial services Web site with stock tickers (with the exception of William Shatner greeting Nathania upon arrival).

Clicking on a city pulls up a list of destinations served by that city. Next to it are up and down arrows showing whether prices to that location are rising or falling and by how much. Very cool dashboard that shows price changes and trends by top city pair.

Here’s Brett’s official statement: “With Inside Track, priceline.com delivers the kind of comprehensive market-wide price trend functionality consumers have come to expect from Web 2.0 travel applications, plus the savings that are unique to priceline.com due to our elimination of booking fees on published fares and our Name Your Own Price airline ticketing service.”

For the business traveler with flexibility, vertical travel search engines now provide ultimate transparency into the yield management systems of airlines.

We really do set our own prices. Online travel is a 24/7 real-time auction - and the forerunner of Google’s paid search algorithm and Yahoo/Overture’s innovative keyword auction.

The launch of Priceline’s Inside Track comes on the heels of an announcement by Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Charter, a vertical search engine that is targeted towards high-end corporate and last-minute airline customers.

Executives from the six major cable companies have been gathering at monthly meetings in an attempt to offer national advertisers innovative methods of reaching their customers, according to The New York Times.

“Project Canoe” has been meeting for six months, alternating between New York and Philadelphia in an attempt to make good on a long-standing promise by cable advertising: to get the right advertising to the right person.

They plan to do this by investing $150 million into a national advertising platform that allows them to streamline their local advertising efforts. Cable execs hope to see revenue increase from $5 billion to $15 billion annually as a result.

With Google delivering such results through highly targeted online advertising, advertisers have remained cautious about cable’s ability to provide the kind of advertising they want. On-demand and DVR technology also hinders cable’s ability to perform in the ad game.

But interactive features could give cable the step up it so desperately needs. The new advertising platform could allow viewers to request specific information about a product.

Still, the cable firms are behind similar efforts by Google, which has a deal with EchoStar, and the recently announced acquisition of Weblistic by Spot Runner.

The cable companies weren’t even considering creating a separate company for the new platform until they were pressured by media buyers from GM and Proctor & Gamble. Now, they are grappling with whether or not to find a CEO from within the cable or advertising industries. However, with the successes of Google and Spot Runner riding on user-driven behavior, perhaps cable should be looking elsewhere to head up their new initiative.

Jason Calacanis has owned the front page of Techmeme–the world’s most influential technology and Web 2.0 news aggregator–for the past 18 hours and counting.

Another Civil War in Silicon Valley? Well, it’s war anyway–even if not civil.

Aussie Duncan Riley of TechCrunch fame bodyslammed Jason after his Calacanis.com post on how to run a startup. Duncan said “Calacanis Fires People Who Have A Life.” So far, 164 comments on TechCrunch about firing anyone who’s not a workaholic …

Jason got up off the canvas, charged his opponent Valleywagged, and parried Duncan’s jabs by updating his post, How to save money running a startup by revising his VC deathmatch coda. http://www.calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17-really-good-tips/

By then Duncan had tagged out: Allen Stern delivered a sidekick to Jason’s solar plexus that sent him all the way to Starbucks country: Working at Mahalo is Like Prison Except We Gots Better Coffee.

Jason Calacanis “Electrified Cage Deathmatch Bar Room Brawl” at SES New York in the SOLD OUT (Not Paris) Hilton in New York the day after St. Patrick’s Day.

Note: See it live! SES On Demand Video will be available to Search Engine Watch members only after the SES New York Deathmatch.

Celebrities on the front row: Kevin Ryan, John Battelle, Andrew Tomkins, Nick Carr, Gordon McLeod and many, many more.

Tickets on sale now!